Joe Barbera is often remembered as extremely charming. Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation.

The very first time I worked for Joe was over 60 years ago at MGM. He and Bill Hanna called me in to do, of all thing, the sound of oil gurgling or circulating in a car engine driven by Tom and Jerry. On a soundstage at MGM, Joe led me up to an oil drum with a microphone hanging in the oil drum and he said "Put your head upside down in the oil drum and give me a little oil circulating." And then he said "Okay, take one." I went "ug, ug, ug ug, ug, ug, ug, ug, ug, ug, ug, ug, ug ... and he had me do 15 takes! I finally stood up, red in the face from hanging upside so long, and Joe said to me, he says this to a 20-year-old Freberg, "That's the best oil gurgling I ever heard." I love you, Joe.

Stan Freberg

Joe's strength was his versatility. He could do anything. He could direct, he could act, he could write. He could make a pitch for a new series and convince people to buy it when he didn't even know how it was going to turn out. He was a great personality, and he was just wonderful at everything he did.

The best advice Joe ever gave me was "Dare." He said, "Be different. Be creative. Just exaggerate. Don't be afraid of being bad. Be bad. Be creative. Get it out there. Dare."

Janet Waldo

Joe Barbera, Margaret Loesch, Loesch's son and Jean MacCurdy. Image courtesy of Margaret Loesch.

Joe Barbera had such savoir-faire, charisma, wit, charm, humor. He was lovely... and got better as he aged. He knew how to tell a joke, verbally and visually, and it all came down to his timing.

I think Joe had a good time, and he made no apologies. He took pride in the way he looked, the way he acted, what he did. He lived life to its fullest and he did it for a long, long time.

He was able to take an idea and endow it with life and make everyone fall in love with it

Joe's legacy is the fact that so many of us in this business would not be here without them. Joe and Bill created a business that didn't exist and they did more than create and provide jobs or pioneered an industry -- they inspired generations of kids to dream and imagine. We should all be grateful.

Jean MacCurdy

I had like five seconds to prepare to meet Joe Barbera for the first time. So I came in, and he started looking at my drawings. And he said, "You drew these? I said "Yep." "How long have you been drawing like this?" "Four years." He looked up and said, "Well, this is how we're going to draw them today..."

He was always trying to think of the next idea, the next show, and how to get it made, and that's where his mind was all the time. We were all part of that, and we couldn't have asked for better.

Scott Jeralds

My first day recording for Scooby-Doo and I was thinking that I was going to be meeting and working with an icon, an industry legend. Needless to say, as a 20-year-old kid, I was a little nervous. So Joe came into the room, and saw me standing there. He said "sit down," so I sat down. He came up to me, looking very serious, put his finger in my face, and said, "These two guys walk into a bar. Why the second guy didn't see it, I'll never know."

You know the old saying, man's best friend is his dog, well I think when it comes to Joe Barbera, there's a lot of actors, Don Messick and myself, I think I can speak for, where we say, Joe was our best friend.

After I'd do a bunch of silly stuff, he said, "I think if you stay out of jail and eat lots of kibble, you'll succeed in this business."

Frank Welker

Joe Barbera posing for a pic outside his venerable studio. Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Animation.

Joe knew the difference between Iwao Takamoto and yours truly, Willie Ito. Of course, the similarity in names between Iwao/Ito could easily add to the confusion. Joe would more often than not call me Iwao. I would laugh it off as an understandable mistake. However, with curiosity, I confronted Iwao with the question that dogged me. "Has Joe ever mistakenly refereed to you as Willie?" With a bit of annoyance reflected in his inscrutable face, he retorted with a resounding, "NEVER!"

He would ask if we were available to come in on a Saturday to look busy. Because he would have a lot of network executives walking through the studio, the Fred Silvermans and Michael Eisners, and they all came through and we'd be sitting there looking busy, busy, busy; but we'd already have all that work done. It was Joe's showmanship. Starting from the storyboard, all the way through production, Joe was a showman.

Willie Ito

He didn't look his age. He didn't act his age. He had the same kind of vigor and enthusiasm whether talking about something he was working on right then, or looking back at the Tom and Jerry cartoons, or telling of his great adventures selling shows to the networks. He was a ball of fire.

He was loyal to the guys that worked with him at MGM, he was loyal to the guys that were willing to join the pioneers in establishing Hanna-Barbera, and he was loyal to any animation veteran who was in their later years was willing to or wanted to work at his company. He was so happy to get one of the old-timers who really knew how everything worked, and the door was wide open to them, because he valued their savvy and their know-how.

It was not work for him. It was what he did. It was what he loved.

Leonard Maltin